Life is full of little
paradoxes. (Probably big ones, too, but those
are beyond the scope of my practice…)
Yesterday I wrote about shaking things up. Today I’m thinking about consistency. The good thing about paradoxes is that both
parts are true. We need both to shake
things up and to be consistent.
Consistency is about
showing up, every time we plan to show up, and doing the work.
When we first jump in to
working out, we have grand plans. We
will work out All The Time! We will be
So Awesome! Probably by tomorrow!
Then we get sore and we
think that maybe we can be awesome later, like maybe next week when we can stop
swearing every time we have to go up and down stairs.
(To be clear: I do not recommend working out through the
kind of pain that means we are injuring ourselves. Sometimes workouts are uncomfortable. Sometimes our hamstrings or quads or some
other muscles complain at us the whole time.
Know the difference between discomfort and scary pain, like we know the
difference between our kids whining and real distress.)
Planning when we are calm
is useful. Folks just starting out might
want to do moderate cardio five days a week.
When that becomes a habit, it’s good to add a weight training
session. Then another one. Planning on rest days helps make everything
better: I know I can do this if I know
that I don’t have to do anything on Saturday…
We can do this.
